AuthorTopic: miscellaneous musings (Read 149257 times)

I decided today that I would pick up my completely dormant instagram account and upload a picture I'd taken recently and quite liked. After a lot of random clicking, I finally learned that the only way to upload a picture to instagram is via their mobile app. Am I just hopelessly behind the times in reacting to this with a good hearty WTF?

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"There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking." - Sir Joshua Reynolds (paraphrased)

That seems really WTF to me as well. Every aspiring photographer without a wifi-equipped camera is just shit outta luck then?

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Quote from: snalin

I just got the image of a midwife and a woman giving birth swinging towards each other on a trapeze - when they meet, the midwife pulls the baby out. The knife juggler is standing on the floor and cuts the umbilical cord with a a knifethrow.

Yeah, I only started using it this year and felt the same when I realised. I guess it is "insta"gram so in theory you're meant to be uploading photos you just took using the app, but you can upload from old photos from your gallery so that's goes against that model.

I realised that being a sadomasochist allows me to get along with cats better.

Bear with me.

Cats when they play with you will slash the shit out of you (my right hand is a ruin right now).

As a dom, I both enjoy pain and inflicting pain, but I do that to the people I love. Pain is not harm. Pain, in my context, is love.

So when I am playing with the cats and they are biting me and scratching me - it's just an expression of love. And it makes perfect sense to me and I totally understand them. And it means I can tolerate a LOT more of their savagery than most.

Cats seem to have a sub side as well. There was one kinky person who wrote about chasing the cats around the apartment with a water pistol (after a verbal warning). This didn't ruin their relationship. When one of the cats got pregnant she decided the safest place to give birth was in the lap of the human who occasionally shouted "Arbitrary Harassment!".

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Doesn't "Bamboo" sound like it should be the name of a cartoon character?

If I'd gotten here a minute sooner I could have posted at 17:17:17 at 17-7-2017.

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Quote from: snalin

I just got the image of a midwife and a woman giving birth swinging towards each other on a trapeze - when they meet, the midwife pulls the baby out. The knife juggler is standing on the floor and cuts the umbilical cord with a a knifethrow.

I realised that being a sadomasochist allows me to get along with cats better.

Bear with me.

Cats when they play with you will slash the shit out of you (my right hand is a ruin right now).

As a dom, I both enjoy pain and inflicting pain, but I do that to the people I love. Pain is not harm. Pain, in my context, is love.

So when I am playing with the cats and they are biting me and scratching me - it's just an expression of love. And it makes perfect sense to me and I totally understand them. And it means I can tolerate a LOT more of their savagery than most.

It was a happy realisation.

I'm a cat person myself, and while I didn't mind the odd scratch & scar (or twenty) when we still had one, I usually didn't go in so much for the "rough play" - mostly because I didn't feel comfortable judging when it's play, or the cat feeling distressed.

It appears that cats have thinner skin that humans (human skin thickness varies between 0.5 mm on eyelids and 4mm on palms), but:

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Here is a PDF link about dog and cat skin thickness. It states that dogs have a thickness of 2.6-5.2mm , while a cat has 0.4-3.6mm skin thickness. One should also take into consideration cats skin is more flexible and hangs off of the muscle, so that injuries are more superficial.

So the cat may not be the best judge of what is likely to break skin and what isn't (or it might regard that as "one of those questions, you know?")

But yes, they're adorable happy little Marquis' de Sade (guess he'd been delighted to have been born with 20 retractable daggers).

« Last Edit: 17 Jul 2017, 08:42 by Case »

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"Freedom is always the freedom of the dissenter" - Rosa Luxemburg"The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you don’t know you're a member of the Dunning-Kruger club. People miss that." - David Dunning

Some time ago, I was reading a thread that was discussing something to do with humans responding locally to climate change. And I immediately thought to recommend a book I'd read not too long ago... except I forgot the title.

Just now I came across it in my library, and remembered the thread. But of course now I can't find it.

Anyway, if you were in that thread, or you're interested in this kind of thing anyway, you should read Adventures in the Anthropocene. It's neat.

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"There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking." - Sir Joshua Reynolds (paraphrased)

Why are people so obsessed with asking the question, "Am I the only one who ... ," whenever they want to express an idea with the slightest chance of not being in lockstep with popular opinion (and sometimes when it is completely obvious that it is)? Do we all just need validation, or is it just something everyone says, just like so many other internet memes?

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"There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking." - Sir Joshua Reynolds (paraphrased)

So, I was doing some shopping, and while passing the local toy-shop (which also sells kids' books), I noticed a book in a rack titled "Jedi Academy: The Force Oversleeps." The jacket announced that it was part of "the New York Times Best-selling 'Jedi Academy' series.

Now a totally get that Harry Potter with lightsabers would make a publisher's heart go ka-ching!, but isn't this a bit dark? I think "Jedi Academy: The Silence of the Younglings" might raise eyebrows as a stocking-filler, or is Revenge of the Sith not canon anymore?

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"I would rather have questions that can't be answered, than answers that can't be questioned." Richard Feynman

I wonder if there's any interest in a browser extension that periodically opens a tab and navigates to an arbitrary online shopping page, news website, facebook page, common google search, WebMD search, etcetera, making it impossible for online activity trackers to accurately profile you.

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Quote from: snalin

I just got the image of a midwife and a woman giving birth swinging towards each other on a trapeze - when they meet, the midwife pulls the baby out. The knife juggler is standing on the floor and cuts the umbilical cord with a a knifethrow.

Idea for Macbeth in the twenty-first century. Macduff was born to a trans man. Makes more sense than “c-section means never born.”

Problematic in that implies that transmen are not men, or at the very least that they are not born men. Seems the better solution would be to simply have Macduff be a woman since the prophecy specifically says "no man".

How effective would donating blood be as a weight loss strategy? You automatically lose a pound with each donation, and even though most of that is water, you also lose all the calories it was carrying and spend energy replenishing your hemocytes. In the absence of lifestyle changes, could a monthly donation make a difference?

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Quote from: snalin

I just got the image of a midwife and a woman giving birth swinging towards each other on a trapeze - when they meet, the midwife pulls the baby out. The knife juggler is standing on the floor and cuts the umbilical cord with a a knifethrow.

How effective would donating blood be as a weight loss strategy? You automatically lose a pound with each donation, and even though most of that is water, you also lose all the calories it was carrying and spend energy replenishing your hemocytes. In the absence of lifestyle changes, could a monthly donation make a difference?

Seems there is a lot of stuff out there about that!

Some of the more *sensible* sites veer away from the actualities of that strategy (probably so they don't get sued!) but the concesus seems to be...

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The average donation is 1 pint of blood, which weights about 1 pound, so right off the bat, you’re walking out of the donation center 1 pound lighter. However, that weight is easily put back on with the liquids you are instructed to drink after donating, along with cookies or other sweet treats to give your blood sugar a quick boost.

Everything that happens within the body, related to metabolism, comes along with some level of calorie-burning. Obviously, every action requires energy, including the production of billions of new red blood cells. Replacing one pint of blood burns approximately 650 calories, which is equivalent to about one hour of cardio – not bad!

So, donating once every two months earns you the same as a one-hour workout, which doesn’t seem that impressive (see above: don’t give up your gym membership). That being said, the real weight-loss benefits of blood donation are a bit more complex.

Some people have compared donating blood to changing the oil in your car, which is a fair description. New blood cells are better at holding and transporting oxygen than old blood cells that are wearing down, which gives your muscles and metabolism a helpful boost. When your body is more oxygenated, your energy levels increase, and your body naturally burns more calories during its daily activities.

It may not be equivalent to a daily workout, but regularly donating blood can help your body run more efficiently and aid in your weight-loss efforts!

That's not bad. I doubt the effects of refreshing your stock of red blood cells are relevant, though. Your old blood cells don't rise to the top or anything, your entire supply is a mix of new, old, and middle-aged cells, so for every end-of-life blood cell you're giving up one that's fresh out of hematopoiesis. Whatever efficiency you gain from replacing all of it can't be much.

The Red Cross ought to work this into their marketing, though. Imagine how many people will be glad to skip a gym day in favour of sitting in a chair for half an hour and eating sweets! And also having a needle stuck in their arm, but no need to emphasise that.

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Quote from: snalin

I just got the image of a midwife and a woman giving birth swinging towards each other on a trapeze - when they meet, the midwife pulls the baby out. The knife juggler is standing on the floor and cuts the umbilical cord with a a knifethrow.

Idea for Macbeth in the twenty-first century. Macduff was born to a trans man. Makes more sense than “c-section means never born.”

Problematic in that implies that transmen are not men, or at the very least that they are not born men. Seems the better solution would be to simply have Macduff be a woman since the prophecy specifically says "no man".

What? No, I'm not saying Macduff is trans. I'm saying the person who gave birth to him is. Therefore, he's not "of woman born" or whatever the line is.

Idea for Macbeth in the twenty-first century. Macduff was born to a trans man. Makes more sense than “c-section means never born.”

Problematic in that implies that transmen are not men, or at the very least that they are not born men. Seems the better solution would be to simply have Macduff be a woman since the prophecy specifically says "no man".

What? No, I'm not saying Macduff is trans. I'm saying the person who gave birth to him is. Therefore, he's not "of woman born" or whatever the line is.

That's not bad. I doubt the effects of refreshing your stock of red blood cells are relevant, though. Your old blood cells don't rise to the top or anything, your entire supply is a mix of new, old, and middle-aged cells, so for every end-of-life blood cell you're giving up one that's fresh out of hematopoiesis. Whatever efficiency you gain from replacing all of it can't be much.

The Red Cross ought to work this into their marketing, though. Imagine how many people will be glad to skip a gym day in favour of sitting in a chair for half an hour and eating sweets! And also having a needle stuck in their arm, but no need to emphasise that.

The more you read, the more the *replenishing* makes sense insofar as working the calories away are concerned.That being, when your blood drops below its expected level, the replenishing process goes into overdrive, which also gives the metabolism a bit of a boost, which in itself can help weight loss.

Sometimes I wonder if future generations will write about my generation as the ones who were crazy or had a hard time coping due to the influx and speed of new technologies and the advent of a connected culture. That the future generations will view us as simpletons or backwards the same way we look back at European medieval hygiene or medicine. That to them its such an every day common sense type of subject, whereas now it is so new and different.

We grew up knowing the world without the internet, then dial up came and the internet was declared a "fad", then cable internet became mainstream, then social media.We have seen records, cassette tapes, cds, mp3, smart phones, streaming in such a short time span compared to before and maybe after our generation.We've seen movies in theaters, on TV, using laser disks, tapes, dvds, blu ray, streamingVehicals that started changing to more eco friendly cars, to straight electric ones.

Will generations after us view us and say we were putting the the horse before the cart? That we had it wrong and it was obvious we needed to move that way? The older generations could have bought a car and it lasted them 20-30 years. Our generation changes cars in a fraction of that time.

Are we just the generation suffering the birthing pains of something new that future generations will not only take for granted, and since we have one foot in the past and one foot in the present that we just can't comprehend what we are experiencing in the now? That nostalgia is such a prevalent thing now because its what we cling to as a simpler time before things became so complicated? That it makes the young feel old before their time?

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You see, there are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. Indeed that's what we provide in our own modest, humble, insignificant... oh, fuck it. - M. Gustave

The older generations could have bought a car and it lasted them 20-30 years.

From 1946 to 74 (my birth to my father's death) my parents got through five cars - that's less than six years each. At that time I understood that ten years was the effective limit for a unitary-bodied car - at least in the UK the rust would get it by then (we had less underbody sealing, indeed it was an extra-cost option, and lots of damp, with salt from the roads in winter).

Climate may have a lot to do with it...

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"Being human, having your health; that's what's important."(from: Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi )"As long as we're all living, and as long as we're all having fun, that should do it, right?"(from: The Eccentric Family )

Personally, I'm on 8 years with my current car. I've had two before, for 2 and 1 year respectively, replaced sure to an accident, and major mechanical failure.

How were going to be remembered, in my opinion, will have less to do, with how we do things now, than with how the period that follows will depict us. We might like to think or digital records, that are about as comprehensive as one can imagine, will ensure, but the exact same pace of evolution that's been mentioned will tender much of what's stored now, inaccessible for the future. So it's down to the next few generations to keep or memory.The comparison with medieval habits has been made; what most people don't see is that the middle ages were much maligned by the (self styled) Enlightenment, who in fact blamed the middle ages for most of the bad habits they insured themselves. Hygiene and medicine both, arguably, worsened from then until we picked up with modern medical insight.

Sometimes I wonder if future generations will write about my generation as the ones who were crazy or had a hard time coping due to the influx and speed of new technologies and the advent of a connected culture. That the future generations will view us as simpletons or backwards the same way we look back at European medieval hygiene or medicine. That to them its such an every day common sense type of subject, whereas now it is so new and different.

You could say that about any generation. My grandmother was born in 1920, between then and 1954 (when my father was born), she would have seen the discovery and creation of insulin, hearing aids, frozen food, "Talkie" movies, and penicillin, the jet engine, the ballpoint pen, nuclear power, kidney dialysis machines and the solar cell. We look at previous generations and think them to be simpletons when in truth, we take for granted the inventions that revolutionised their lives.

In truth, no generation has ever been backwards, but rather they had different challenges to overcome to the ones we have to. Its that need to overcome those challenges that necessitates invention, its just that later generations forget the impact that those inventions had. Consider penicillin and antibiotics in general (especially in light of antibiotic resistant bacteria), a conservative estimates puts the number of lives saved by penicillin at around 80 million. It was a revolutionary drug, but one these days we don't give a second thought about.

Future generations might look back at us and wonder how we got on without Invention X, but later generations will look back at and wonder the same thing about them.

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Whenever someone says "I'm not book smart but I am street smart.", all I hear is "I'm not real smart, but I am imaginary smart."

For that matter, why is the female variant of 'John Doe' not 'Jane Buck'?

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Quote from: snalin

I just got the image of a midwife and a woman giving birth swinging towards each other on a trapeze - when they meet, the midwife pulls the baby out. The knife juggler is standing on the floor and cuts the umbilical cord with a a knifethrow.

In answer to the first, buck is considered unlikely to be a reference to the male of a species so doe naked isn't a parallel option. One explanation is a shortening of buckskin which is a pale leather and a comparison to exposed human skin that hasn't been weathered or tanned. Buck also used as an implication of being in low standing so could originally have been an implication of being too poor to afford clothing. Some think it may be a corruption of butt. However, the best chronology doesn't seem to hold that theory up too well.

As for the second, this derives from English legal wrangling where a hypothetical party needed to be named and subsequently used for persons who couldn't be identified in criminal and legal proceedings. As a rule the plaintiff of victim was John Doe and the defendant or aggressor would be Richard Roe. (note the occurrence in Roe. v Wade where Roe was a substitute name for Norma McCorvey). The origins of the choice of those names is unknown but again it wasn't about gender in the modern sense as, at the time of inception, women would not have had the same legal standing to either seek or resist legal action.

I like the term "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it." Its a great mindset of not worrying about a possible bad situation/reaction while you are currently taking action on something.

I also like the term of "burning bridges." Its a great way of saying you destroyed a previous relationship or reputation with someone/thing (work, acquaintance, family member, etc.) and is impossible to repair.

I really like the idea of "we'll burn that bridge when we get to it." Its a combination of the first two and indicates the intention of destroying a relationship/situation if need be while taking action.

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You see, there are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. Indeed that's what we provide in our own modest, humble, insignificant... oh, fuck it. - M. Gustave

Actually, that seems to be the mentality of some project leaders in my workplace. They call it managing projects with progressive insights. Meaning mostly, they'll burn the bridge before finding out they're on the wrong side of the river. Shutting down systems without making sure the replacement is viable, let alone in place...

I am a fan of malapropisms - that is, mixing two expressions or sayings.

It should not surprise that I am a fan of the "burn that bridge when we get to it".

Related:

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“Dean! We are going to move on and put this behind us!” Ridcully snapped.

“Excuse me, Archchancellor?” said Ponder Stibbons, who was Head of Inadvisably Applied Magic and also the university’s Praelector, a position interpreted at UU as “the one who gets given the tedious jobs”.

“Yes, Stibbons?”

“It may be a good idea to put it behind us before we move on, sir,” said Stibbons. “That way it will be further behind us when we do, in fact, move.”

...you could be dealing with a necromancer, a Dr. Frankenstein, or a particularly dramatic baker.

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Quote from: snalin

I just got the image of a midwife and a woman giving birth swinging towards each other on a trapeze - when they meet, the midwife pulls the baby out. The knife juggler is standing on the floor and cuts the umbilical cord with a a knifethrow.

Amazon prime video (and I assume many other such services) has an 'add to watchlist' feature but what it really needs is a 'not interested' feature so I'm not faced with a giant list of things I already know I don't want to watch every time I go to look for something.

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Quote from: snalin

I just got the image of a midwife and a woman giving birth swinging towards each other on a trapeze - when they meet, the midwife pulls the baby out. The knife juggler is standing on the floor and cuts the umbilical cord with a a knifethrow.